


Sharp-eyed

by misbehavingvigilante



Series: Tales Inspired by the Discord Year 1 [26]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 12:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbehavingvigilante/pseuds/misbehavingvigilante
Summary: In which Clint to cope, he swears, pays far too much attention to Tony and Steve's relationship.





	Sharp-eyed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NarNarStrider](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NarNarStrider/gifts).

> Happy Birth, Papaya~!
> 
> I really love outsider pov and papaya really loves Hawkeye, so this was a great marriage of our mutual love of stony and also Hawkeye. Also shoutout to [Perf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Soul_and_Perfume/profile), for cheerreading this!
> 
> Additional warnings include implied/referenced brainwashing and attempting to heal from that and such. With that said, enjoy~!

It starts off as a coping mechanism, if Clint is honest.

He doesn’t really quite want to be honest because then it means what he went through was traumatic, and something he has to deal with. He doesn’t want to deal with it, he wants Natasha the head Natasha did to his head to be enough and be done with it.

But it’s not, and so in lieu of not dealing with that and pretending he’s fine, because hey, he fought off an invading alien species after the fact, so of course he’s fine. Clint doesn’t need the attention and resources that people need far more than him, or even because of his role in the attack of New York.

So he observes his new team with renewed interest. It may be generous calling them a team, they were more like what was available, that had somehow managed not to kill each other during the attack, and instead focused their attention on killing aliens instead.

Nothing quite said team bonding like killing something together, Clint supposed. But then his life, is rather unusual all things considered.

He missed some things due to being brainwashed. The most interesting thing he missed during that seems to have been between Stark and Captain America.

There was something of a rocky start there with how tension lingered in the air, and how each held themselves when they ran into each other at the tower. It was odd how Clint remembered that Cap had wanted to go travel the world but had come back to the tower when Tony’s invitation had reached him easily enough.

Not quite the behavior you’d expect from someone if they truly felt nothing but annoyance and disinterest.

There had some time before the tesseract was there to prey on their emotions and bring out the worst in them. Just not quite as the total loss of bodily autonomy that Clint had lost, but it had still not seemed fun as Natasha had told him mainly apprehending Loki and then meeting Thor during SHIELD’s second introduction to the man were the only meetings pre-tesseract.

Clint had liked him even before all this talk of aliens and gods came about, of course now Thor was a little too close to Loki for Clint to feel completely at ease around him, so maybe it was a good thing that Thor was still squirreled away on Asgard.

But then that much time hadn’t really passed since the attack, Avengers Tower had seen incredible progress in the few scant weeks though Banner and Stark had seemed incredibly chummy when he’d last saw them. Judging by how familiar Banner acted around the tower, he had been here whilst things had been under construction. Clint wasn’t quite sure how that worked with the Hulk, but he didn’t put it pass Stark to have areas that were completely soundproof.

Many of the labs of the tower he hadn’t seen. If he was honest, he didn’t want to see them either, there had been a long time after Natasha’s efforts that SHIELD had double checked to make sure there was nothing remaining and he had more or less been in a Panopticon.

Avengers Tower had Jarvis, the AI, but even that seemed incredibly less invasive compared to what he went through, even though Clint was secretly happy that Cap also seemed to be a little wary of Jarvis, too. Though for entirely different reasons, mostly Cap was still wrapping his head around what Jarvis could and couldn’t do, and didn’t want to feel like an idiot.

Stark was good about making people feel like idiots, that was for sure.

Clint had fully expected that to be an additional point of contention between them, but surprisingly his judgement was off.

Tony could be an asshole about it sometimes, but in general, he was always willingly to explain to Cap whatever he wanted to know. Seemingly enamored with the idea of being the one who got to explain all these things, but also going on very long tangents in the meantime about things Cap hadn’t need to know at all.

The other surprising thing was that Cap always seemed to listen. Perhaps out of just merely being polite, or attempting to show he was willing to hear Tony out. Regardless, he always listened.

In those moments, the previous tension of the haunting meeting brought on by tesseract faded away.

Clint felt jealous because he wanted it to be that easy for him, but it wasn’t.

From then on, perhaps he does pay too much attention to the point, he’s forced to make an attempt at socialization to have a cover. After all, if he’s spending time with the rest of them in equal measure, neither Tony nor Steve can be confused to why they’re being singled out.

Of course, that also meant socializing with Thor, who had returned to Earth and quickly joined them in the Tower upon learning it was the Avenger’s new nest. It is cozier than SHIELD, that’s for sure, a sort of manic energy runs through it, but with Thor, things seem to settle into place finally.

His early tension of being around Thor due to his relation to Loki by proxy just melts away with his infectious personality.

Bruce isn’t exactly a chill dude by nature, but has found a good homeostasis, it appears. See, he’s smart enough to know big words too regardless of what some people think. The fact that he and Nat made up also puts him at ease because he doesn’t tend to like people who Nat doesn’t vet.

At least, not anymore. Learnt that the hard way.

Natasha is as always his rock. He does really love her and she isn’t stealth stalking him nearly as anymore meaning she must see some improvement in him somewhere. Clint’s not sure how that’s possible he doesn’t really feel very different.

The only real difference is he’s being a voyeur, but a smart voyeur so no one barring Natasha knows what he’s doing.

Tony and Steve are really interesting to watch because sometimes they play off each other so well it’s like they’ve known each other for years and other times they act like they’ve just gone through a bitter divorce and are forced to make nice with each other because it’s not polite to have such cold stares and exchange such vicious mockery in public.

Clint thinks it’s hilarious, but admittedly he also prefers when things are good.

Weirdly enough, the world at large seems worse when Tony and Steve fight. It isn’t even just the tension that make things difficult in the Tower, it’s that villains strike more often and with graver consequences, and more bad things just seem to happen in general.

Could the fate of the universe really rest on these two getting along?

It’s only after that thought, that suddenly it pieces together the weird mercurial relationship, the strange rituals together, the fact that they just can’t seemingly stay away from each other.

“Oh my god, they have a thing for each other.”

“You’re just noticing this now?” Natasha said, in the tone of voice that suggested she has known this from the beginning.

“…No.” Clint lied. “I was just making conversation.” 

Of course, Nat being Nat doesn’t fall for the lie but does look faintly amused nonetheless. “Only you, I think could use your people watching skills to cope and not notice an attraction between those two.”

“I feel like you’re insulting me.”

“If I really wanted to insult you, you’d know it. Besides, your weird strategy made you actually get to know your team better. Which was good, if you kept focusing on both of them like that, eventually they were going to catch on.” Natasha added, “After you know, they got done staring into each other’s eyes.”

“That does explain that one time we all had lunch together, neither of them even acknowledged me the entire time. How do you spend an entire meal looking into each other eyes and ignore me?” Of course at the time, Clint hadn’t really been in the mood for conversation so it worked out, but it had still stuck out to him as something odd.

Good to know it wasn’t just him.

“You could try wearing more purple, if you want to stand out.” Natasha offered, knowing full well Clint would have to dress from head to toe in purple of varying and terribly clashing hues for Tony and Steve to actually rip their eyes away from each other.

“I do like purple.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna chat, I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thiefoftruth26).


End file.
